http://www.livingfithealthyandhappy.com/2009/11/my-muscles-are-sore-but-it-feels-good.html

One remedy for delayed onset muscle soreness is to take a soothing hot shower after you exercise. The heat will help to loosen the tightness of the fibers and improve circulation. When your muscles are feeling sore, avoid working them for a few days or until they begin to feel better. I recommend performing a variety of exercises that strengthen and train different muscle groups. These exercises should be specific and performed only on certain days. For example you can choose one day to work your chest muscles, then select a different day to train your legs and a third day to exercise your back. Be consistent because this will allow each group to get exercise and adequate recovery time between workouts.

One last thing to remember: If you experience sharp pain that is persistent, consult your health care provider as soon as possible because it could be indicative of a serious injury or health problem.

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There is actually some clinical research out there to support an “active rest” to alleviate some of the symptoms of delayed onset muscle soreness. Active rest is basically a light workout of the same muscles that caused the DOMS in the first place. In most of the research conducted, the light exercise is performed within a few hours of the initial bout of heavier eccentric exercise. However, people seem to have good results if they perform the second bout of exercise within 24 hours — so the next day can help as well.

If you want to make it more challenging so that it doesn’t just feel like you’re “going through the motions” you can perform the light workout uni-laterally.

In otherwords, perform each exercise on one-side of your body only and then switch to the other side. This causes the side of your body not performing the work to balance against the other and can not only improve balance and coordination, but it also causes some neuro-muscular adaptions that are unique from performing bi-lateral exercises (where you work both sides with a single exercise.)

Surprisingly, stretching has not been shown to be particularly effective for preventing or treating DOMS — although there are certainly other benefits to doing it.

Other promising treatments that have some clinical research behind then include compression therapy (wrapping the muscle or compressing it with a compression sleeve) and cryotheraphy — submerging the affected muscle in very cold water post-workout. I’ve had fairly good results reducing tenderness and soreness in my calves after particularly intense calf-workouts or runs by kneeling in an ice bath for 15 minutes immediately following my workout (generally within an hour of exercise.) So if you think you pushed yourself really hard, you might want to consider some of these tactics to reduce DOMS the next day.

In general, I don’t really mind DOMS unless the stiffness interferes with mobility. Sometimes that can happen with legs — where climbing stairs can be difficult due to soreness. The problem there is because the soreness causes you to tighten up and not move through the muscle’s natural and full-range of motion, the muscles get even tighter. Kind of a death spiral. The ice baths seem to really help with legs (plus, submerging your entire body in ice doesn’t sound particularly safe or appealing.)

If you’re interested in going really deep on DOMS, you can check out an article on this I put together a month or so. It’s basically a review of the current scientific literature around DOMS, what exercise physiologists think causes DOMS and some of the treatments that do work (and don’t):

Best of luck with your training …
matt

Discovered that the workout actually worked out a lot of the soreness I felt. Now I’m a convert. Light workouts all the way.